XE3 Released. Available to Download Now for SA Subscribers

I just got an email from Embarcadero announcing the availability of XE3 for download from the Maintenance Portal. Both a 51 MB web installer and a 3.1 GB ISO are available. I don’t have any public links, and presumably anyone on SA will have received their notifications directly already. But for anyone not on SA, the public links will presumably be posted or announced shortly.

And then there are the apologists who refuse to countenance the possibility – even in the light of all the evidence – that Embarcadero are far more interested in screwing customers over if they think it will bring in extra revenue, than they are in delivering compelling, quality products to make people want to upgrade. They just want to force people to have to.

Have Embarcadero even apologised, in any way, shape or form ?

Sincere question, because I honestly haven’t seen that apology if it exists.

But I doubt that it does exist, because their position is that there is nothing to apologise for. Which is not only breathtakingly arrogant, but quite simply insulting that they should think we are so stupid as to swallow that.

Not that that necessarily helps a whole lot, in that few people would read it all before downloading. For example, if it wasn’t for all the fuss about the EULA change this time around, I wouldn’t have been aware of a change that apparently crept into the Pro version a while back, where dbexpress is only supposed to be used for accessing local data. I think I may have unwittingly been in breach of that change for a while.

The other bit that seems to have crept back in (if it was ever removed) was the bit that makes it a violation of your license to use it if you leave the “territory” in/from which it was originally purchased (except temporarily – where “temporarily” is an undefined period of time).

I say “seems to have crept back in” because at least one person in the Embarcadero forums was under the impression that this condition of the EULA was revoked, withdrawn or otherwise rescinded. But if that was the case, then Embarcadero changed their mind. Again. Best keep a very close eye on the EULA in every update we get from now on.

What a great relationship, when you can’t trust your vendor to not be trying to screw you over in an EULA change….

Kudos to Embarcadero for promptly delivering it to the SA subscribers, as they did last year with XE2. I know we had to wait a few days for delivery with previous releases so it’s good to see that they’ve listened to feedback and improved their service. Looking forward to downloading it and taking it for a spin!

Maybe the kudos you wish to impart are a bit premature. As I understand it, this is still vapourware with what looks like a premature release of the email. People that have tried to download it have compalined that the links point to the XE2 release, not XE3.

The broken links are to the pages containing the previous version downloads and the product information page.

I’m not sure why someone on SA, already with XE2, would be much concerned with either of those pages. The link for downloading XE3 itself is merely to the Embarcadero SA/Maintenance portal. The XE3 downloads work. Mine is already installed.

Embarcadero is a company. Stop trying to convey it with human values. Their only reason to exists is profit.

I do agree the way they are managing their product is… misguided, to say the least. They could do so much better by opening more and caring for their customers. But we shouldn’t expect them to be good just for being good’s sake.

The good thing is that the community is highly suspicious of them, so every bit of this and any future EULA will be closely inspected.